BYLINE: Lisa
Traiger, Special to The Washington Post
For years, Irish dancing was stuck in the doldrums of local, regional and
national competitions that rigidly pronounced what dancers of this vibrant,
percussive form could and couldn't do if they wanted to win medals and renown.
Then, in 1990, Mark Howard broke the mold that was restraining Irish dance. His
Chicago-based troupe of young adult dancers, the Trinity Irish Dance Company,
has achieved an awesome degree of success while avoiding the assembly line
regimentation of "Riverdance" and its even kitschier cousin, "Lord of the
Dance." Trinity's dancers showed their sincerity and pinpoint accuracy Tuesday
at Montgomery College's Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center. The sold-out
program's 11 dances, interspersed with finely nuanced musical numbers by the
band -- singer and guitarist Ryan Sheridan, piper Christopher Layer and drummer
Ned Folkerth -- didn't track Irish dancing through the ages as much as it took
the form out of its straitjacket and into the fresh air.
Alongside traditional numbers were boundary-stretching modern works that
experimented with arm and torso movements, rhythmic variation, and contemporary
groupings and floor patterns. Irish dance in its standard form favors backs set
ramrod-straight and arms held tightly at the sides; only the feet fly, drilling
into the floor, turning in, out, back in again.
The Trinity dancers, 17 for this program, mounted an astonishing attack. The
first leaps of the opening number, "Johnny," signaled the alert attention to
detail for which the troupe is acclaimed. The women, in soft-soled, lace-up
ghillies, tucked one knee beneath them as the other flew out, jabbing the air.
These gazellelike leaps reappeared in contemporary and classic numbers, and each
time as the leg shot out, the dancers were momentarily airborne. Quick shuffles,
lightning-fast heel clicks, seconds-long toe stands and thundering group stomps,
jigs and hornpipes make up Trinity's standard Irish step vocabulary.
Of the evening's progressive works, Sean Curran's "Curran Events" allowed the
dancers to stretch themselves the furthest. In updated plaid schoolgirl skirts
and black tanks, the women ran through the traditional step dance vocabulary to
a percussive score. Their arms mimicked the crosses, beats, flexes and points
their feet spit out in high-octane staccato. Then, in silence, one dancer
pounded out a phrase; as the group joined, Curran layered percussive body
rhythms -- slaps of thighs, claps, stomps, snaps -- in an engagingly complex
score, before winding down again.
Six local students joined the Trinity pros for dance-on parts in the classic
step numbers. Clad in their splendid competition regalia, they were Gabrielle
Muskett of the O'Neill-James School of Irish Dancing in Virginia; Joe Duffey,
Kelly McGovern and teacher Jennifer O'Connell of Maryland's Culkin
School of Traditional Irish Dance; and Moira James and Maggie
Donovan of the Margaret Prendergast School of Irish Dance, also in Maryland.